Best Representational Solo -- Historic (2004)

Sargent and Italy, Denver Art Museum

The Denver Art Museum pays a lot of attention to artists from the turn of the last century because they're a popular group guaranteed to bring in big crowds of viewers. The lineup of traveling solos that have stopped by the DAM in recent years includes Toulouse-Lautrec, Matisse, Bonnard, Homer and, last summer, John Singer Sargent. The Andy Warhol of his time, Sargent was a gay dandy reveling in the chic world of the rich, but the paintings in Sargent and Italy concern only his love for Italy, where he often vacationed and, interestingly enough, was born.